Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media,
including ancient pottery, sculpture in wood and bronze, ink
painting on silk and paper and more recently manga, cartoon, along
with a myriad of other types of works of art.
It also has a long
history, ranging from the beginnings of human habitation in
Japan
, sometime in the 10th millennium BC, to the
present.
Historically, Japan has been subject to sudden invasions of new and
alien ideas followed by long periods of minimal contact with the
outside world. Over time the Japanese developed the ability to
absorb, imitate, and finally assimilate those elements of foreign
culture that complemented their aesthetic preferences. The earliest
complex art in Japan was produced in the 7th and 8th centuries A.D.
in connection with
Buddhism.
In the 9th century, as
the Japanese began to turn away from China
and develop
indigenous forms of expression, the secular arts became
increasingly important; until the late 15th century, both religious
and secular arts flourished. After the
Ōnin War (1467-1477), Japan entered a period
of political, social, and economic disruption that lasted for over
a century. In the state that emerged under the leadership of the
Tokugawa shogunate, organized
religion played a much less important role in people's lives, and
the arts that survived were primarily secular.
Painting is the preferred artistic
expression in Japan, practiced by amateurs and professionals alike.
Until modern times, the Japanese wrote with a
brush rather than a
pen, and their
familiarity with brush techniques has made them particularly
sensitive to the values and
aesthetics of
painting. With the rise of popular culture in the
Edo period, a style of
woodblock prints called
ukiyo-e became a major art form and its
techniques were fine tuned to produce colorful prints of everything
from daily news to schoolbooks. The Japanese, in this period, found
sculpture a much less sympathetic medium
for artistic expression; most Japanese sculpture is associated with
religion, and the medium's use declined
with the lessening importance of traditional Buddhism.
Japanese ceramics are among the
finest in the world and include the earliest known artifacts of
their culture. In
architecture, Japanese preferences for
natural materials and an interaction of interior and exterior space
are clearly expressed.
Today, Japan rivals most other modern nations in its contributions
to modern art, fashion and architecture, with creations of a truly
modern, global, and multi-cultural (or acultural) bent.
History of Japanese art
Jōmon art
Statuette with Snow Glasses,
Jōmon Era
The first settlers of Japan, the
Jōmon
people (c 11000?–c 300 BC), named for the
cord
markings that decorated the surfaces of their clay vessels, were
nomadic hunter-gatherers who later practiced organized farming and
built cities with population of hundreds if not thousands. They
built simple houses of wood and thatch set into shallow earthen
pits to provide warmth from the soil. They crafted lavishly
decorated pottery storage vessels, clay figurines called
dogu, and crystal jewels.
Yayoi art
The next
wave of immigrants was the Yayoi people, named
for the district in Tokyo
where
remnants of their settlements first were found. These
people, arriving in Japan about 350 BC, brought their knowledge of
wetland rice cultivation, the manufacture of copper weapons and
bronze bells (
dōtaku), and
wheel-thrown, kiln-fired ceramics.
Kofun art
The third stage in Japanese prehistory, the
Kofun, or
Tumulus, period (c AD
250–552), represents a modification of
Yayoi
culture, attributable either to internal development or external
force. In this period, diverse groups of people formed political
alliances and coalesced into a nation. Typical artifacts are bronze
mirrors, symbols of political alliances, and clay sculptures called
haniwa which were erected outside
tombs.
Asuka and Nara art
During the
Asuka and
Nara periods, so named because the seat of
Japanese government was located in the Asuka Valley from 552 to 710
and in the city of
Nara until 784, the
first significant invasion by Asian continental culture took place
in Japan.
The
transmission of Buddhism provided the initial impetus for contacts
between China, Korea
and Japan. The
Japanese recognized the facets of
Chinese culture that could profitably be
incorporated into their own: a system for converting ideas and
sounds into writing;
historiography;
complex theories of government, such as an effective
bureaucracy; and, most important for the arts,
new technologies, new building techniques, more advanced methods of
casting in
bronze, and new techniques and
media for painting.
Throughout the 7th and 8th centuries, however, the major focus in
contacts between Japan and the Asian continent was the development
of Buddhism. Not all scholars agree on the significant dates and
the appropriate names to apply to various time periods between 552,
the official date of the introduction of Buddhism into Japan, and
784, when the Japanese capital was transferred from Nara. The most
common designations are the Suiko period, 552–645; the
Hakuhō period, 645–710, and the Tenpyō
period, 710–784.
The earliest Japanese sculptures of the Buddha are dated to the 6th
and 7th century. They ultimately derive from the 1st-3rd century CE
Greco-Buddhist art of
Gandhara, characterized by flowing dress patterns
and realistic rendering, on which Chinese and Korean artistic
traits were superimposed. These indigenous characteristics can be
seen in early
Buddhist art in
Japan and some early Japanese Buddhist sculpture is now
believed to have originated in Korea, particularly from Baekje, or
Korean artisans who immigrated to Yamato Japan.
Particularly, the
semi-seated Maitreya form was adapted into a highly developed
Korean style which was transmitted to Japan as evidenced by the
Kōryū-ji
Miroku Bosatsu and the
Chūgū-ji Siddhartha statues. Although many
historians portray Korea as a mere transmitter of Buddhism, the
Three Kingdoms, and particularly Baekje, were instrumental as
active agents in the introduction and formation of a Buddhist
tradition in Japan in 538 or 552.They illustrate the terminal point
of the
Silk Road
transmission of Art during the first few centuries of our era.
Other examples can be found in the development of the iconography
of the Japanese
Fūjin Wind God, the
Niō guardians, and the near-
Classical floral patterns in temple
decorations.
The
earliest Buddhist structures still extant in Japan, and the oldest
wooden buildings in the Far East are found
at the Hōryū-ji
to the southwest of Nara. First built in the
early 7th century as the private temple of Crown
Prince Shōtoku, it consists of 41
independent buildings. The most important ones, the main worship
hall, or
Kondō (Golden Hall), and
Gojū-no-tō
(Five-story
Pagoda), stand in the center of
an open area surrounded by a roofed cloister. The
Kondō,
in the style of
Chinese worship
halls, is a two-story structure of post-and-beam construction,
capped by an
irimoya, or
hipped-gabled roof of ceramic tiles.
Inside the
Kondō, on a large rectangular platform, are
some of the most important sculptures of the period. The central
image is a Shaka Trinity (623), the historical
Buddha flanked by two
bodhisattvas, sculpture cast in bronze by the
sculptor
Tori Busshi (flourished early
7th century) in homage to the recently deceased Prince Shōtoku. At
the four corners of the platform are the
Guardian Kings of the Four Directions,
carved in wood around 650.
Also housed at Hōryū-ji is the Tamamushi Shrine, a
wooden replica of a Kondō, which is set on a high wooden
base that is decorated with figural paintings executed in a medium
of mineral pigments mixed with lacquer.
Temple
building in the 8th century was focused around the Tōdai-ji
in Nara. Constructed as the headquarters for
a network of temples in each of the provinces, the Tōdaiji is the
most ambitious religious complex erected in the early centuries of
Buddhist worship in Japan. Appropriately, the 16.2-m (53-ft) Buddha
(completed 752) enshrined in the main Buddha hall, or
Daibutsuden, is a
Rushana Buddha,
the figure that represents the essence of Buddhahood, just as the
Tōdaiji represented the center for Imperially sponsored Buddhism
and its dissemination throughout Japan. Only a few fragments of the
original statue survive, and the present hall and central Buddha
are reconstructions from the
Edo
period.
Clustered around the Daibutsuden on a gently sloping hillside are a
number of secondary halls: the
Hokke-dō (Lotus Sutra Hall), with its
principal image, the
Fukukenjaku
Kannon (the most popular bodhisattva),
crafted of dry lacquer (cloth dipped in lacquer and shaped over a
wooden armature); the
Kaidanin
(Ordination Hall) with its magnificent clay statues of the
Four Guardian Kings; and the storehouse,
called the
Shōsōin. This
last structure is of great importance as an art-historical cache,
because in it are stored the utensils that were used in the
temple's dedication ceremony in 752, the eye-opening ritual for the
Rushana image, as well as government documents and many secular
objects owned by the Imperial family.
Heian art
Bandainagon Ekotoba, Tokiwa
Mitsunaga, 12th century
In 794 the capital of Japan was officially transferred to Heian-kyō
(present-day
Kyoto), where it remained until
1868. The term
Heian period
refers to the years between 794 and 1185, when the
Kamakura shogunate was established at the
end of the
Genpei War. The period is
further divided into the early Heian and the late Heian, or
Fujiwara era, the pivotal date being
894, the year
imperial embassies to
China were officially discontinued.
Early Heian art: In reaction to the growing wealth
and power of organized
Buddhism in Nara,
the priest
Kūkai (best known by his
posthumous title Kōbō Daishi, 774-835) journeyed to China to study
Shingon, a form of
Vajrayana Buddhism, which he introduced into Japan
in 806. At the core of Shingon worship are
mandalas, diagrams of the spiritual universe, which
then began to influence temple design. Japanese Buddhist
architecture also adopted the
stupa,
originally an
Indian architectural
form, in its Chinese-style pagoda.
The temples erected for this new sect were built in the mountains,
far away from the Court and the laity in the capital. The irregular
topography of these sites forced Japanese architects to rethink the
problems of temple construction, and in so doing to choose more
indigenous elements of design. Cypress-bark roofs replaced those of
ceramic tile, wood planks were used instead of earthen floors, and
a separate worship area for the laity was added in front of the
main sanctuary.
The temple
that best reflects the spirit of early Heian Shingon temples is the
Murō-ji
(early 9th
century), set deep in a stand of cypress trees on a mountain
southeast of Nara. The wooden image (also early 9th c.) of
Shakyamuni, the "historic" Buddha,
enshrined in a secondary building at the Murō-ji, is typical
of the early Heian sculpture, with its ponderous body, covered by
thick drapery folds carved in the hompa-shiki (rolling-wave) style, and its
austere, withdrawn facial expression.
Fujiwara art: In the
Fujiwara period,
Pure
Land Buddhism, which offered easy salvation through belief in
Amida (the Buddha of the Western Paradise),
became popular. This period is named after the
Fujiwara family, then the most powerful in
the country, who ruled as
regents for the Emperor, becoming,
in effect, civil dictators. Concurrently, the Kyoto nobility
developed a society devoted to elegant aesthetic pursuits. So
secure and beautiful was their world that they could not conceive
of Paradise as being much different. They created a new form of
Buddha hall, the Amida hall, which blends the secular with the
religious, and houses one or more Buddha images within a structure
resembling the mansions of the nobility.
The
Hō-ō-dō (Phoenix Hall, completed 1053) of the Byōdōin
, a temple in Uji to the
southeast of Kyoto, is the exemplar of Fujiwara Amida halls.
It consists of a main rectangular structure flanked by two L-shaped
wing corridors and a tail corridor, set at the edge of a large
artificial pond. Inside, a single golden image of Amida (c. 1053)
is installed on a high platform. The Amida sculpture was executed
by
Jōchō, who used a new canon of
proportions and a new technique (
yosegi), in which multiple pieces of wood are
carved out like shells and joined from the inside. Applied to the
walls of the hall are small relief carvings of celestials, the host
believed to have accompanied Amida when he descended from the
Western Paradise to gather the souls of believers at the moment of
death and transport them in lotus blossoms to Paradise.
Raigō paintings on the wooden
doors of the Hō-ō-dō, depicting the Descent of the Amida Buddha,
are an early example of
Yamato-e,
Japanese-style painting, and contain representations of the scenery
around Kyoto.
E-maki: In the last century of the Heian period,
the horizontal, illustrated narrative handscroll, known as
e-maki (絵巻, lit. "picture scroll"),
came to the fore. Dating from about 1130, the illustrated '
Tale of Genji' represents one of the high
points of Japanese painting. Written about the year 1000 by
Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting
to the Empress
Akiko, the novel deals with the
life and loves of Genji and the world of the Heian court after his
death. The 12th-century artists of the
e-maki version
devised a system of pictorial conventions that convey visually the
emotional content of each scene. In the second half of the century,
a different, livelier style of continuous narrative illustration
became popular. The
Ban
Dainagon Ekotoba (late 12th century), a scroll that deals
with an intrigue at court, emphasizes figures in active motion
depicted in rapidly executed brush strokes and thin but vibrant
colors.
E-maki also serve as some of the earliest and greatest
examples of the
otoko-e (Men's
pictures) and
onna-e (Women's
pictures) styles of painting. There are many fine differences in
the two styles, appealing to the aesthetic preferences of the
genders. But perhaps most easily noticeable are the differences in
subject matter.
Onna-e, epitomized by the Tale of Genji
handscroll, typically deals with court life, particularly the court
ladies, and with romantic themes.
Otoko-e, on the other
hand, often recorded historical events, particularly battles. The
Siege of the Sanjō Palace
(1160), depicted in the "Night Attack on the Sanjō Palace" section
of the
Heiji Monogatari handscroll
is a famous example of this style.
Kamakura art
In 1180 a war broke out between the two most powerful warrior
clans, the
Taira and the
Minamoto; five years later the Minamoto emerged
victorious and established a de facto seat of government at the
seaside village of
Kamakura,
where it remained until 1333. With the shift of power from the
nobility to the warrior class, the arts had to satisfy a new
audience: men devoted to the skills of warfare, priests committed
to making Buddhism available to illiterate commoners, and
conservatives, the nobility and some members of the priesthood who
regretted the declining power of the court. Thus, realism, a
popularizing trend, and a classical revival characterize the art of
the
Kamakura period.
Sculpture: The
Kei
school of sculptors, particularly
Unkei,
created a new, more realistic style of sculpture.
The two Niō guardian images (1203) in the Great South Gate
of the Tōdai-ji in Nara illustrate Unkei's dynamic supra-realistic
style. The images, about 8 m (about 26 ft) tall, were
carved of multiple blocks in a period of about three months, a feat
indicative of a developed studio system of artisans working under
the direction of a master sculptor.
Unkei's polychromed wood sculptures
(1208, Kōfuku-ji
, Nara) of two Indian sages, Muchaku and Seshin, the
legendary founders of the Hossō
sect, are among the most accomplished realistic works of the
period; as rendered by Unkei, they are remarkably individualized
and believable images.
Calligraphy and painting: The
Kegon Engi Emaki, the illustrated
history of the founding of the
Kegon sect, is
an excellent example of the popularizing trend in Kamakura
painting. The Kegon sect, one of the most important in the Nara
period, fell on hard times during the ascendancy of the
Pure Land sects.
After the Genpei War (1180-1185), Priest
Myōe of Kōzan-ji
sought to revive the sect and also to provide a
refuge for women widowed by the war. The wives of samurai
had been discouraged from learning more than a
syllabary system for transcribing sounds and ideas
(see
kana), and most were incapable of reading
texts that employed Chinese ideographs (
kanji). Thus, the
Kegon Engi Emaki combines passages of
text, written with a maximum of easily readable syllables, and
illustrations that have the dialogue between characters written
next to the speakers, a technique comparable to contemporary comic
strips. The plot of the
e-maki, the lives of the two
Korean priests who founded the Kegon sect, is swiftly paced and
filled with fantastic feats such as a journey to the palace of the
Ocean King, and a poignant love story.
A work in a more conservative vein is the illustrated version of
Murasaki Shikibu's diary.
E-maki versions of her novel continued to be produced, but
the nobility, attuned to the new interest in realism yet nostalgic
for past days of wealth and power, revived and illustrated the
diary in order to recapture the splendor of the author's times. One
of the most beautiful passages illustrates the episode in which
Murasaki Shikibu is playfully held prisoner in her room by two
young courtiers, while, just outside, moonlight gleams on the mossy
banks of a rivulet in the imperial garden.
Muromachi art
Ginkaku-ji, Kyoto, 1489
During the
Muromachi period
(1338-1573), also called the Ashikaga period, a profound change
took place in Japanese culture. The
Ashikaga clan took control of the shogunate
and moved its headquarters back to Kyoto, to the
Muromachi district of the city. With the
return of government to the capital, the popularizing trends of the
Kamakura period came to an end, and cultural expression took on a
more aristocratic, elitist character.
Zen
Buddhism, the
Ch'an sect traditionally thought
to have been founded in China in the 6th century CE, was introduced
for a second time into Japan and took root.
Painting: Because of secular ventures and trading
missions to China organized by Zen temples, many Chinese paintings
and objects of art were imported into Japan and profoundly
influenced Japanese artists working for Zen temples and the
shogunate. Not only did these imports change the subject matter of
painting, but they also modified the use of color; the bright
colors of Yamato-e yielded to the
monochromes
of painting in the Chinese manner, where paintings generally only
have black and white or different tones of a single color.
Typical
of early Muromachi painting is the depiction by the priest-painter
Kao (active early 15th century) of the
legendary monk Kensu
(Hsien-tzu
in Chinese) at the moment he achieved enlightenment. This
type of painting was executed with quick brush strokes and a
minimum of detail.
'Catching a Catfish with a Gourd' (early
15th century, Taizo-in, Myoshin-ji
, Kyoto), by the priest-painter Josetsu (active c. 1400), marks a turning
point in Muromachi painting. Executed originally for a low-standing
screen, it has been remounted as a hanging scroll with inscriptions
by contemporary figures above, one of which refers to the painting
as being in the "new style." In the foreground a man is depicted on
the bank of a stream holding a small gourd and looking at a large
slithery catfish. Mist fills the middle ground, and the background
mountains appear to be far in the distance. It is generally assumed
that the "new style" of the painting, executed about 1413, refers
to a more Chinese sense of deep space within the picture
plane.
The foremost artists of the Muromachi period are the
priest-painters
Shūbun and
Sesshū.
Shūbun, a monk at the
Kyoto temple of Shokoku-ji
, created in the painting Reading in a Bamboo
Grove (1446) a realistic landscape with deep recession into
space. Sesshū, unlike most artists of the period, was able
to journey to China and study Chinese painting at its source.
Landscape of the Four Seasons (
Sansui Chokan; c.
1486) is one of Sesshu's most accomplished works, depicting a
continuing landscape through the four seasons.
Azuchi-Momoyama art
In the
Momoyama period
(1573-1603), a succession of military leaders, such as
Oda Nobunaga,
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and
Tokugawa Ieyasu, attempted to bring peace
and political stability to Japan after an era of almost 100 years
of warfare. Oda, a minor chieftain, acquired power sufficient to
take
de facto control of the government in
1568 and, five years later, to oust the last Ashikaga shogun.
Hideyoshi took command after Oda's death, but his plans to
establish hereditary rule were foiled by Ieyasu, who established
the
Tokugawa shogunate in
1603.
Painting: The most important school of painting in
the Momoyama period was that of the
Kanō school, and the greatest innovation of
the period was the formula, developed by
Kano Eitoku, for the creation of monumental
landscapes on the sliding doors enclosing a room.
The decoration of the
main room facing the garden of the Juko-in,
a subtemple of Daitoku-ji
(a Zen temple in Kyoto), is perhaps the best extant
example of Eitoku's work. A massive
ume tree and twin pines are depicted on pairs of
sliding screens in diagonally opposite corners, their trunks
repeating the verticals of the corner posts and their branches
extending to left and right, unifying the adjoining panels.
Eitoku's screen, 'Chinese Lions', also in Kyoto, reveals the bold,
brightly colored style of painting preferred by the samurai.
Hasegawa Tohaku, a contemporary of
Eitoku, developed a somewhat different and more decorative style
for large-scale screen paintings. In his '
Maple Screen', now in the temple of
Chishaku-in, Kyoto, he placed the trunk of the
tree in the center and extended the limbs nearly to the edge of the
composition, creating a flatter, less architectonic work than
Eitoku, but a visually gorgeous painting. His sixfold screen,
'
Pine Wood', is a masterly rendering in
monochrome ink of a grove of trees enveloped
in mist.
Art of the Edo period
Kitagawa Utamaro, "Flowers of Edo:
Young Woman's Narrative Chanting to the Shamisen", ca. 1800
The
Tokugawa shogunate of the
Edo period gained undisputed control of
the government in 1603 with a commitment to bring peace and
economic and political stability to the country; in large measure
it was successful. The shogunate survived until 1867, when it was
forced to capitulate because of its failure to deal with pressure
from Western nations to open the country to foreign trade. One of
the dominant themes in the Edo period was the repressive policies
of the shogunate and the attempts of artists to escape these
strictures. The foremost of these was the closing of the country to
foreigners and the accoutrements of their cultures, and the
imposition of strict codes of behavior affecting every aspect of
life, the clothes one wore, the person one married, and the
activities one could or should not pursue.
In the early years of the Edo period, however, the full impact of
Tokugawa policies had not yet been felt, and some of Japan's finest
expressions in architecture and painting were produced: Katsura
Palace in Kyoto and the paintings of
Tawaraya Sōtatsu, pioneer of the
Rimpa school.
Architecture: Katsura Detached Palace, built in
imitation of
Genji's palace,
contains a cluster of shoin buildings that combine elements of
classic Japanese architecture with innovative restatements. The
whole complex is surrounded by a beautiful garden with paths for
walking.
Painting: Sōtatsu evolved a superb decorative
style by re-creating themes from classical literature, using
brilliantly colored figures and motifs from the natural world set
against gold-leaf backgrounds.
One of his finest works is the pair of
screens The Waves at Matsushima in the Freer Gallery
in Washington, D.C. A century later, Korin
reworked Sōtatsu's style and created visually gorgeous works
uniquely his own. Perhaps his finest are the screen paintings of
red and white plum blossoms.
Sculpture The Buddhist monk
Enkū carved 120,000 Buddhist images in a rough,
individual style.
Woodblock prints and Bunjinga: The school of art
best known in the West is that of the
ukiyo-e paintings and
woodblock prints of the demimonde, the
world of the
kabuki theater and the brothel
district. Ukiyo-e prints began to be produced in the late 17th
century, but in 1764 Harunobu produced the first polychrome print.
Print designers of the next generation, including
Torii Kiyonaga and
Utamaro, created elegant and sometimes insightful
depictions of courtesans.In the West, erotic woodblock "prints"
became popular because the material was not otherwise available. In
that sense, such niche prints did more to promote Japanese art in
the West than art studies.
In the 19th century the dominant figure was
Hiroshige, a creator of romantic and somewhat
sentimental landscape prints. The odd angles and shapes through
which Hiroshige often viewed landscape, and the work of Kiyonaga
and Utamaro, with its emphasis on flat planes and strong linear
outlines, had a profound impact on such Western artists as
Edgar Degas and
Vincent van Gogh.
Another school of painting contemporary with ukiyo-e was
Bunjinga, a style based on paintings executed by
Chinese scholar-painters. Just as ukiyo-e artists chose to depict
figures from life outside the strictures of the Tokugawa shogunate,
Bunjin artists turned to Chinese culture. The exemplars of this
style are
Ike no Taiga,
Yosa Buson,
Tanomura
Chikuden, and
Yamamoto
Baiitsu.
Meiji art
In the years after 1867, when
Emperor
Meiji ascended the throne, Japan was once again invaded by new
and alien forms of culture. The introduction of Western cultural
values led to a dichotomy in Japanese art, as well as in nearly
every other aspect of culture, between traditional values and
attempts to duplicate and assimilate a variety of clashing new
ideas. This split remained evident in the late twentieth century,
although much synthesis had by then already occurred, and created
an international cultural atmosphere and stimulated contemporary
Japanese arts toward ever more innovative forms.
By the
early 20th century, European art forms were well introduced and
their marriage produced notable buildings like the Tokyo Train Station
and the National Diet Building
that still exist today.
Manga were first drawn in the Meiji period,
influenced greatly by English and French
political cartoons.
Painting: The first response of the Japanese to
Western art forms was open-hearted acceptance, and in 1876 the
Technological Art School
was opened, employing Italian instructors to teach Western methods.
The second response was a pendulum swing in the opposite direction
spearheaded by
Okakura Kakuzo and the
American
Ernest Fenollosa, who
encouraged Japanese artists to retain traditional themes and
techniques while creating works more in keeping with contemporary
taste. Out of these two poles of artistic theory developed
Yōga (Western-style painting) and
Nihonga (Japanese painting), categories that remain
valid to the present day.
Postwar period
After
World War II, many artists began
working in art forms derived from the international scene, moving
away from local artistic developments into the mainstream of world
art. But traditional Japanese conceptions endured, particularly in
the use of modular space in architecture, certain spacing intervals
in music and dance, a propensity for certain color combinations and
characteristic literary forms. The wide variety of art forms
available to the Japanese reflect the vigorous state of the arts,
widely supported by the Japanese people and promoted by the
government. In the 1950s and 1960s, Japan's artistic
avant garde included the internationally
influential
Gutai group, which
originated or anticipated various postwar genres such as
performance art,
installation art,
conceptual art, and
wearable art.
American art and architecture greatly influenced Japan. Though fear
of earthquakes severely restricted the building of a skyscraper,
technological advances let Japanese build larger and higher
buildings with more artistic outlooks.
As Japan has always made little distinction between 'fine art' and
'decorative art', as the West is first beginning to do, it is
important to note Japan's significant and unique contributions to
the fields of art in entertainment, commercial uses, and graphic
design. Cartoons imported from America led to
anime that at first were derived exclusively from
manga stories. Today, anime abounds, and many artists and studios
have risen to great fame as artists;
Hayao Miyazaki and the artists and animators
of
Studio Ghibli are generally
regarded to be among the best the anime world has to offer. Japan
also flourishes in the fields of
graphic design, commercial art (e.g.
billboards, magazine advertisements), and in
video game graphics and concept art.
Contemporary art in Japan
Japanese modern art takes as many forms and expresses as many
different ideas as modern art in general, worldwide. It ranges from
advertisements, anime, video games, and architecture as already
mentioned, to sculpture, painting, and drawing in all their myriad
forms.
Many artists do continue to paint in the traditional manner, with
black ink and color on paper or silk. Some of these depict
traditional subject matter in the traditional styles, while others
explore new and different motifs and styles, while using the
traditional media. Still others eschew native media and styles,
embracing Western oil paints or any number of other forms.
In sculpture, the same holds true; some artists stick to the
traditional modes, some doing it with a modern flair, and some
choose Western or brand new modes, styles, and media.
Yo Akiyama is just one of countless modern
Japanese sculptors. He works primarily in clay pottery and
ceramics, creating works that are very simple and straightforward,
looking like they were created out of the earth itself.
Another
sculptor, using iron and other modern materials, built a large
modern art sculpture in the Israeli
port city of Haifa
, called
Hanabi (Fireworks).
Takashi Murakami is arguably one of
the most well-known Japanese modern artists in the Western world.
Murakami and the other artists in his studio create pieces in a
style, inspired by anime, which he has dubbed "
superflat". His pieces take a multitude of forms,
from painting to sculpture, some truly massive in size. But most if
not all show very clearly this anime influence, utilizing bright
colors and simplified details.
Performing arts
Kabuki Theater
A remarkable number of the traditional forms of Japanese music,
dance, and theater have survived in the contemporary world,
enjoying some popularity through reidentification with Japanese
cultural values. Traditional music and dance, which trace their
origins to ancient religious use -
Buddhist,
Shintō,
and
folk - have been preserved in the
dramatic performances of
Noh,
Kabuki, and
bunraku theater.
Ancient court music and dance forms deriving from continental
sources were preserved through Imperial household musicians and
temple and shrine troupes. Some of the oldest musical instruments
in the world have been in continuous use in Japan from the
Jōmon period, as shown by finds of stone
and clay
flutes and
zithers having between two and four strings, to which
Yayoi period metal
bells and
gongs were
added to create early musical ensembles. By the early historical
period (sixth to seventh centuries CE), there were a variety of
large and small
drums, gongs,
chimes, flutes, and stringed instruments, such
as the imported mandolin-like
biwa and the flat
six-stringed zither, which evolved into the thirteen-stringed
koto. These instruments
formed the orchestras for the seventh-century continentally derived
ceremonial court music (
gagaku), which,
together with the accompanying
bugaku (a type
of court dance), are the most ancient of such forms still performed
at the Imperial court, ancient temples, and shrines.
Buddhism introduced the rhythmic chants, still
used, that underpin
Shigin, and that were
joined with native ideas to underlay the development of vocal
music, such as in
Noh.
Aesthetic concepts
Japanese art is characterized by unique polarities. In the ceramics
of the prehistoric periods, for example, exuberance was followed by
disciplined and refined artistry.
Another instance is provided by two
16th-century structures that are poles apart: the Katsura Detached Palace is an
exercise in simplicity, with an emphasis on natural materials,
rough and untrimmed, and an affinity for beauty achieved by
accident; Nikkō Tōshō-gū
is a rigidly symmetrical structure replete with
brightly colored relief carvings covering every visible
surface. Japanese art, valued not only for its simplicity
but also for its colorful exuberance, has considerably influenced
19th-century Western painting and
20th
century Western architecture.
Japan's aesthetic conceptions, deriving from diverse cultural
traditions, have been formative in the production of unique art
forms. Over the centuries, a wide range of artistic motifs
developed and were refined, becoming imbued with symbolic
significance. Like a
pearl, they acquired many
layers of meaning and a high luster. Japanese aesthetics provide a
key to understanding artistic works perceivably different from
those coming from Western traditions.
Within
the East Asian artistic tradition, China has been the
acknowledged teacher and Japan the devoted student.
Nevertheless, several Japanese arts developed their own style,
which can be differentiated from various Chinese arts. The
monumental, symmetrically balanced, rational approach of Chinese
art forms became miniaturized, irregular, and subtly suggestive in
Japanese hands. Miniature
rock gardens,
diminutive plants (
bonsai), and
ikebana (flower arrangements), in
which the selected few represented a garden, were the favorite
pursuits of refined aristocrats for a millennium, and they have
remained a part of contemporary cultural life.
The diagonal, reflecting a natural flow, rather than the fixed
triangle, became the favored structural device, whether in
painting, architectural or garden design, dance steps, or musical
notations. Odd numbers replace even numbers in the regularity of a
Chinese master pattern, and a pull to one side allows a motif to
turn the corner of a three-dimensional object, thus giving
continuity and motion that is lacking in a static frontal design.
Japanese painters used the devices of the cutoff, close-up, and
fade-out by the twelfth century in
yamato-e, or Japanese-style, scroll painting,
perhaps one reason why modern filmmaking has been such a natural
and successful art form in Japan. Suggestion is used rather than
direct statement; oblique poetic hints and allusive and
inconclusive melodies and thoughts have proved frustrating to the
Westerner trying to penetrate the meanings of literature, music,
painting, and even everyday language.
The Japanese began defining such aesthetic ideas in a number of
evocative phrases by at least the tenth or eleventh century. The
courtly refinements of the aristocratic Heian period evolved into
the elegant simplicity seen as the essence of good taste in the
understated art that is called
shibui. Two terms originating from
Zen Buddhist meditative practices describe degrees of
tranquility: one, the repose found in humble melancholy
(
wabi), the other, the serenity
accompanying the enjoyment of subdued beauty (
sabi). Zen thought also contributed a
penchant for combining the unexpected or startling, used to jolt
one's consciousness toward the goal of enlightenment. In art, this
approach was expressed in combinations of such unlikely materials
as lead inlaid in lacquer and in clashing poetic imagery.
Unexpectedly humorous and sometimes grotesque images and motifs
also stem from the Zen
koan
(conundrum). Although the arts have been mainly secular since the
Tokugawa period, traditional
aesthetics and training methods, stemming generally from religious
sources, continue to underlie artistic productions.
Artists
Traditionally, the artist was a vehicle for expression and was
personally reticent, in keeping with the role of an artisan or
entertainer of low social status. The
calligrapher, a member of the
Confucian literati class, or noble
samurai class in Japan, had a higher status, while
artists of great genius were often recognized in the
Kamakura period by receiving a name from a
feudal lord and thus rising socially. The performing arts, however,
were generally held in less esteem, and the purported immorality of
actresses of the early
Kabuki theater caused
the
Tokugawa government to bar
women from the stage; female roles in Kabuki and Noh thereafter
were played by men.
After World War II, artists typically gathered in arts
associations, some of which were long-established professional
societies while others reflected the latest arts movement. The
Japan Artists League, for
example, was responsible for the largest number of major
exhibitions, including the prestigious annual Nitten (
Japan Art Exhibition). The
P.E.N. Club of Japan
(P.E.N. stands for prose, essay, and narrative), a branch of an
international writers' organization, was the largest of some thirty
major authors' associations. Actors, dancers, musicians, and other
performing artists boasted their own societies, including the
Kabuki Society, organized in 1987 to
maintain this art's traditional high standards, which were thought
to be endangered by modern innovation. By the 1980s, however,
avant-garde painters and sculptors had eschewed all groups and were
"unattached" artists.
Art schools
There are a number of specialized universities for the arts in
Japan, led by the national universities.
The most important is
the Tokyo Arts
University
, one of the most difficult of all national
universities to enter. Another seminal center is
Tama Arts University in Tokyo,
which produced many of Japan's late twentieth- century innovative
young artists. Traditional training in the arts, derived from
Chinese traditional methods, remains; experts teach from their
homes or head schools working within a master-pupil relationship. A
pupil does not experiment with a personal style until achieving the
highest level of training, or graduating from an arts school, or
becoming head of a school. Many young artists have criticized this
system as stifling creativity and individuality. A new generation
of the
avant-garde has broken with this
tradition, often receiving its training in the West. In the
traditional arts, however, the master-pupil system preserves the
secrets and skills of the past. Some master-pupil lineages can be
traced to the Kamakura period, from which they continue to use a
great master's style or theme. Japanese artists consider technical
virtuosity as the
sine qua non
of their professions, a fact recognized by the rest of the world as
one of the hallmarks of Japanese art.
The
national government has actively supported the arts through the
Agency for Cultural
Affairs, set up in 1968 as a special body of the Ministry of Education
. The agency's budget for FY 1989 rose to
￥37.8 billion after five years of budget cuts, but still
represented much less than 1 percent of the general budget. The
agency's Cultural Affairs Division disseminated information about
the arts within Japan and internationally, and the
Cultural Properties
Protection Division protected the nation's cultural heritage.
The Cultural Affairs Division is concerned with such areas as art
and culture promotion, arts copyrights, and improvements in the
national language. It also
supports both national and local arts and cultural festivals, and
it funds traveling cultural events in music, theater, dance, art
exhibitions, and filmmaking. Special prizes are offered to
encourage young artists and established practitioners, and some
grants are given each year to enable them to train abroad. The
agency funds national museums of modern art in Kyoto and Tokyo and
the
Museum of Western Art in
Tokyo, which exhibit both Japanese and international shows. The
agency also supports the
Japan
Academy of Arts, which honors eminent persons of arts and
letters, appointing them to membership and offering ￥3.5 million in
prize money. Awards are made in the presence of the
Emperor, who personally bestows the highest
accolade, the
Cultural Medal.
Private sponsorship and foundations
Arts patronage and promotion by the government are broadened to
include a new cooperative effort with corporate Japan to provide
funding beyond the tight budget of the Agency for Cultural Affairs.
Many other public and private institutions participate, especially
in the burgeoning field of awarding arts prizes. A growing number
of large corporations join major newspapers in sponsoring
exhibitions and performances and in giving yearly prizes. The most
important of the many literary awards given are the venerable
Naoki Prize and the
Akutagawa Prize, the latter being the
equivalent of the
Pulitzer Prize in
the United States.
In 1989 an effort to promote cross-cultural exchange led to the
establishment of a Japanese "
Nobel
Prize" for the arts, the
Premium
Imperiale, by the
Japan Art
Association. This prize of US$100,000 was funded largely by the
mass media conglomerate
Fuji-Sankei and
was awarded on a worldwide selection basis.
A number
of foundations promoting the arts arose in the 1980s, including the
Cultural Properties
Foundation set up to preserve historic sites overseas,
especially along the Silk Road in Inner Asia and at Dunhuang
in China.
Another
international arrangement was made in 1988 with the United States
Smithsonian
Institution
for cooperative exchange of high-technology studies
of Asian artifacts. The government plays a major role by
funding the
Japan Foundation, which
provides both institutional and individual grants, effects
scholarly exchanges, awards annual prizes, supported publications
and exhibitions, and sends traditional Japanese arts groups to
perform abroad. The Arts Festival held for two months each fall for
all the performing arts is sponsored by the Agency for Cultural
Affairs. Major cities also provides substantial support for the
arts; a growing number of cities in the 1980s had built large
centers for the performing arts and, stimulated by government
funding, were offering prizes such as the
Lafcadio Hearn Prize initiated by the
city of
Matsue. A number of new municipal
museums were also providing about one-third more facilities in the
1980s than were previously available.
In the late 1980s,
Tokyo added more than twenty new cultural halls, notably,
the large Cultural Village built by
Tokyo Corporation and the
reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre
. All these efforts reflect a rising popular
enthusiasm for the arts. Japanese art buyers swept the Western art
markets in the late 1980s, paying record highs for
impressionist paintings and US$51.7 million
alone for one
blue period Picasso.
Notes
See also
References
- This article was originally based on material from
WebMuseum Paris - Famous Artworks exhibition [31943].
- Japan -
- "The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity" by John Boardman
(Princeton University Press, 1994) ISBN 0-691-03680-2
- "Alexander the Great: East-West Cultural contacts from Greece
to Japan" (NHK and Tokyo National Museum, 2003)
- "De l'Indus à l'Oxus, Archéologie de l'Asie Centrale", Osmund Bopearachchi, Christine Sachs,
ISBN 2-9516679-2-2
- "The Crossroads of Asia, Transformation in image and symbols",
1992, ISBN 0-9518399-1-8
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